Summary

Television Portrait (Jack, Bradford) is a large colour photograph of a man sitting in an armchair. Graham has photographed him from the right side, close up. His right arm is bent, elbow resting on the arm of the chair in the foreground of the image, and his face half concealed behind his right hand. His forefinger is propped against the side of his head, while the other three fingers hang down in front of his cheek, mouth and chin, concealing them. The outline of his face in profile is just visible behind his hand. His right eye is in the shadow of his eye socket, the result of an overhead light source. It is focused on something beyond the picture frame (the television), following the orientation of his body. The photograph was taken in low light with a shallow depth of field. As a result, only a narrow strip of the image is in focus. On the man’s forehead the texture of his skin is visible. On his chest and stomach, the knitted stitches of a turquoise sweater and the detail of a silver badge pinned onto an open khaki shirt provide further focal points. His long, dark hair disappears into the shadows behind his head and arm. The back and side of the armchair frame him with areas of dark olive green. Behind his left side, blurred dark areas suggest openings into other rooms. Above the man’s head is a small area of light coloured wall in the background. The environment appears informal and domestic, the atmosphere relaxed and intimate. Graham began his ongoing series of Television Portraits in 1989 with a photograph of his friend Cathy, Television Portrait (Cathy, London) (Tate P77635). Other portraits include Television Portrait (Danny, Bristol) 1991 (Tate P77636) and Television Portrait (Yuko, Kyoto) 1992 (Tate P77638). All the TelevisionPortraits are framed in black and produced in an edition of five. Tate’s copy is number three.

Graham began making colour photographs in 1978. He was influenced by the work of American photographer William Eggleston (born 1939), whose seminal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1976 introduced colour photography to the realm of high art. Two early series, A1 The Great North Road (book published 1983) and BeyondCaring (book published 1986), stem from Graham’s experiences as a young graduate (Bristol University, micro-biology, 1978) on the dole. In the latter series he photographed unemployment offices, documenting the poverty and hopelessness suffered by many people in Britain at that time. These photographs combine photojournalism (traditionally associated with black and white photography) with the use of colour and a strong conceptual framework. Graham has described this series as ‘confronting the economic violence being done to a large section of the population by early 1980s Thatcherism’ (quoted in Paul Graham, p.12). A subsequent series, TroubledLand (book published 1987), was shot in Northern Ireland and depicts apparently normal landscapes which on closer inspection are found to have been insidiously affected by the political troubles there. Graham then began travelling around Europe and flying regularly to Japan, producing further series New Europe
(book published 1993) and Empty Heaven (book published 1995). He unintentionally began the Television Portraits in 1989 during a period at home in London in between trips abroad. In 1996 he explained that:

they were the antithesis of working in foreign lands: taking photographs in your own home ... I was with my flatmate watching television, and just took this picture, Cathy, and realised how beautiful it was ... I keep doing it. Funny thing is, I can’t set them up. I’d like to have about twenty of them, and I’ve got twelve now, but it never works when I say, can I come round to your house and do one of you? I tried it, and it just doesn’t work.

(Quoted in Paul Graham, p.30.)

The subjects of Graham’s Television Portraits all look away from the camera, their gaze focused on the television outside the picture frame, and their bodies in a passive state of watching. At ease in the environment of their own homes, they appear relaxed and unselfconscious. Graham uses photography as a means to explore, literally and metaphorically, the ways in which societies mask or conceal their historical wounds. With his Television Portraits, he has discovered a means of eliminating much of the masking conventional to portraiture. This has resulted in images which reveal aspects of people not normally on public view. For a recent series of portraits he photographed young people in bars and clubs in cities in the First World. These are collected in a book entitled End of an Age
(1999).